Well, if you'd like to set up a MySpace fan page for me, please feel free to do so (I'd really appreciate it), but I don't really feel an inclination to set another one up myself.

What do you think of the idea of using myspace as a re-link to your own website?
Don't know to what extent this is possible the myspace folks will surely not like that much…

Often myspace (or else) serves as an 'entry point' for people not knowing your music (i started searching at myspace myself instead of going to your website directly). In this way they see the people you are connected with or they follow a link from another musician on myspace to your website – you never know…
I think its hard to judge for people who know your music already…

Maybe you could embed your website into all these music communities, if possible? Its at least better than maintaining 20 profiles at a time.

btw: new album is great, artwork too!
thx

If fans wish to create groups on their preferred social networks that don’t already exist, then they’re free to do so, but it doesn’t make sense for me to maintain a MySpace page to deliver less than 100 plays per day, yet still suck traffic away from my own paid site.

Cheers mate!

The only thing that I think myspace still has value for is that its where people go to check out a new artist. It’s almost an reflexive response; you hear about someone new, you look up their tracks on myspace. As you said Chris, gradually that function will be replaced by better sites like Bandcamp. But for the moment myspace still has that source of internet traffic largely dominated.

I think the natural successor to the music social network site is the blog – people who want to hear about cutting-edge stuff are better served going through the musical filter of a blogger than wading through the mind-bogglingly vaste ‘democracy’ of myspace. how much blogs reflect trends rather than create them is an ongoing debate…but the potential is there. Put 100 bands through a writer with a good ear for music, he’ll pick out the best 10 for you, then decide yourself which ones you like. It’s a lovely Utopian idea isnt it!

Looking forward to the new album mate.

1. Capitalise on fears of exclusion and alienation by offering tenuous promises of social importance and interactivity.
2. Expound the virtues of online ‘democratisation’, supposedly allowing content creators to reach fans directly, yet simultaneously positioning yourself as a transparent middleman, gaining power by leveraging the Long Tail values of negligible individual content creators multiplied by large number of users. Net effect = aggregators win, individuals lose.
3. Force users to interact individually solely through the infrastructure you provide, thereby strengthening your control as users become familiar with, and dependent upon, your infrastructure to further their illusion of social interaction.
4. Achieve stratospheric pie-in-the-sky valuation based on the number of users dependent on your service, though with little to no thought as to useful monetisation strategies other than ads.
5. Go bankrupt, while the users abandon ship for the next social networking flavour of the week.

I’m only half-kidding with this, but then perhaps I’m almost one tin-hat short of a conspiracy theory…

The sad (or happy) truth of the matter is that i discovered Ochre for the first time today after checking out the Bloc MySpace, which is how i ended up here. Good old MySpace. At least i’m now listening to and enjoying your music via a means that doesn’t involve an advert for Little Boots.

Oh, I do think Andrew Dubber etc., offer some sage advice, but realistically there’s a limit as to how your can realise results from their advice; there’s little use in chasing the same carrot as everyone else, especially at this level. You’ve simply got to carve out your own niche on a common-sense foundation, making it easy for listeners to get to hear your music and want to throw some change your way somehow.